INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY

January 2000

A PLAN FOR THE THIRD DECADE OF ISPP
(2000-2010)

I. Purpose of Plan:

The purpose of this plan is to provide a guide for action for the officers, committees, and members of ISPP as the Society moves into its third decade. This plan indicates our members areas of concern and proposes some constructive ways of working on these concerns in keeping with the purpose of the Society. This plan builds on the "Plan for the Second Decade of ISPP" written in July 1988 and a workshop on future directions conducted as part of the January 2000 Mid-Winter Governing Council meeting.

II. Building and Maintaining Membership:

Goal: The goal of this plan is to develop and maintain a membership of 1300-1400 current dues paid members, which is multi-disciplinary, international, and involves non-academics as well as academics.

Strategies:

1. ISPP should target countries of Asia, Africa, and Central/Eastern Europe as most important for ISPP membership growth.

a. Increasing Members by Country and Region

1. ISPP should make arrangements with selected universities to receive the journal Political Psychology free, for five years. In addition, ISPP should send them ISPPNews, brochures and membership list, and relevant web links. This program would be a productive way to use the limited number of free copies of the journal that we are now entitled to receive under our contract with Blackwells.

2. ISPP should establish a category of “institutional membership” designed for currency-poor countries. For one membership fee (perhaps a reduced fee), an institution could join ISPP. The institution would receive the journal and newsletter, and any person(s) officially affiliated with that institution could attend the annual conference at the member rate and could receive other member benefits as they develop in the future.

3. ISPP should develop further the “small conference” program. This would be especially useful for Central/Eastern European countries where there are already small nuclei of ISPP members. The first small conference grant was awarded in 2000.

4. ISPP should develop a European Summer Institute in Political Psychology. This would draw younger potential members who cannot afford to travel to Ohio State.

5. ISPP should create a database of everyone who has submitted a paper proposal in the last 5 years for the annual meeting or submitted an article to Political Psychology, but who is not now a member, and maintain contact with him/her, (for example, send ISPPNews).

b. Increasing Members by Age: ISPP should recruit graduate students and junior faculty to join ISPP by encouraging them to attend the annual meeting:

1. ISPP should create incentive for members to bring new junior members to ISPP meetings, (e.g., registration reductions, recognition)

2. ISPP should encourage junior scholars to volunteer for meeting tasks in return for free registration.

3. ISPP should combine the midwinter governance meeting with a small conference. Potential junior scholars from the area attending would incur minimal costs.

4. ISPP should institutionalize the position of Chair of the Junior Scholars Committee as a regular attendee at Governing Council meetings with a voice but not a vote.

5. ISPP should use “senior plenary talks” at the annual meeting as a form of recognition and as an attraction to potential junior members, who would appreciate seeing and hearing important senior people talk in a broad way about major topics.

6. ISPP should use our "mentorship" program at the annual meeting as a forum of contact and interaction between potential junior members and senior experts of political psychology.

c. Increasing Members by Discipline: Currently ISPP has out of a total of 1250 members 491 members who identify themselves as political scientists and 362 members who identify themselves as psychologists, as well as smaller numbers from many disciplines.

1. ISPP should seek to recruit a wider variety of political psychology practitioners.

d. Increasing Members by Topic of Intellectual Interest: ISPP should seek to capture the attention and intellectual interest of new generations of scholars, who are exploring topics that are or may become equally important – perhaps even critical – to the intellectual and political landscape of the next few decades.

1. ISPP should develop and emphasize the political psychological aspects of areas of current and future intellectual ferment by making a contribution to all of these emerging topics through deliberate solicitation of plenary talks and symposia at the annual meetings and journal submissions.

Examples of such areas include the following:
• Globalization.
•“Jihad versus McWorld.” This title of Benjamin Barber’s book suggests a “fault line” of international, international, and cultural conflict that is quite different from that of the Cold War era.
•“Beyond reason.” In a variety of ways and from a variety of perspectives, the notion of the rational individual actor is being challenged.

III. Publications:

Strategies:

1. The Society needs to take a more active role in promoting the three major publications, especially Political Psychology.

a. The web site for the journal should be expanded to better advertise the journal. It could include tables of contents and abstracts for forthcoming issues and tables of content and abstracts for some number of years of back issues.

b. The Society should advertise the journal and annual in publications of other societies and organizations. The Society should attempt to get Blackwell to publicize the journal to the extent of its contractual obligation. However, the Society should take whatever actions are necessary to publicize the journal and annual to the fullest extent.

c. The Society should also try to advertise the journal outside of North America to increase international submissions and to expand the visibility of the journal.

d. The Society should act to increase institutional subscriptions to the journal by identifying institutions of ISPP members that do not subscribe to the journal and urge them to do so.

e. The Society should continue to pursue ways to make back issues of the journal available through the web.

2. The editor(s) of Advances in Political Psychology should be recommended by the Publications Committee in consultation with the President and approved by the Governing Council.

a. The editor(s) will be appointed for a five-year term that is once renewable. (The first term for the initial editor should begin with the publication of the first volume.)

b. The editor(s) will appoint an editorial board that will help to advise on the content and directions of the publication as well as assisting in the review of submissions.

c. The editor(s) of Advances should consult with the editor of the journal to insure that any potential overlap in content is resolved acceptably to both publications.

3. The editor(s) of the Handbook of Political Psychology should be recommended by the Publications Committee in consultation with the President and approved by the Governing Council.

a. The editor(s) for the next volume in the series should be appointed five years after the publication of the previous volume to allow enough time for the volumes to appear in print every ten years.

b. The editor(s) will appoint an editorial board that will help to advise on the content and directions of the publication and to recommend authors for the volume.

4. The status of the editorial terms for Political Psychology, Advances in Political Psychology, and The Handbook of Political Psychology should be a regular agenda item at each Governing Council meeting to insure appropriate actions are taken well in advance of deadlines.

5. The Executive Director should establish contact with the editors of the Annual Review of Psychology and Annual Review of Political Science and ask them to consider inviting every other year a review article about a political psychological topic.

6. The President and Governing Council need to ensure that the Publications Committee is kept up to date as specified by rules adopted by the Governing Council at its January 8, 1995 meeting. Specifically:

a. The Publications Committee will consist of six individuals.

b. The term of appointment will normally be three years.

c. The term of appointment will be set so two new members will join the board each year.

d. The status of the Publications Committee should be a regular agenda item at each Governing Council meeting to insure that appointments to the board

7. ISPPNews should encourage exchanges about the substance of political psychology and the state or development of the Society. In addition, it should contain information on ISPP activities, jobs, fellowships, small meetings, meetings of interest to ISPP members, and new publications by ISPP members.

Strategies:

1. In addition to the annual meeting, ISPP should have a regional or small meeting every year.

a. Regional meetings should be relevant to the needs of the region,
and might be a mixture of general topics, or they might focus on topics of specific regional interest. Their purpose however should be to give a particular region access to ISPP activities.

b. The midwinter meetings of the Governing Council should be accompanied by 1-2 day short professional meeting/seminar on one or two topics with the participation of the Governing Council members and participants from the local area.

2. ISPP should adopt the following cycle for planning its meeting location:

a. Meet in the US two years out of five, in Europe two years out of five, and in the World one year out of five [NB Canada counts as NA; Mexico counts as W; Israel counts as EU]. Which would give 4 World meetings, 6 Europe meetings and 6 NA meetings in a sixteen-year cycle.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16
NA	EU	NA	W	EU	NA	EU	W	NA	EU	NA	EU	W	NA	EU	W

3. ISPP should try including poster sessions as a part of the annual meetings beginning with the 2001 conference:
• with an extensive campaign in the ISPPNews and conference materials beforehand, and
• implementing a prize for the best poster.

a. Posters are well established in the psychology community and recognized as being as valid as papers.

b. The program always has problems with finding coherence especially for ‘individual’ papers; it is easier to group posters with more loose associations, as they are not being presented as part of a single ‘story’. A more informal discussion session around a group of posters can be arranged also.

c. Posters are particularly suitable for presenting certain kinds of data e.g. EITHER detailed quantitative material OR extensive qualitative material where there are many quotations from respondents.

d. Posters are very useful where extended small group or one-to-one discussion is useful – this can be helpful also for junior scholars where an informal interaction is useful.

4. Quality of the meetings:

a. In an effort to maintain the professional image of the organization all program chairs should REQUIRE all submissions to include an abstract of a specified length.

b. Abstracts should be published on the Website with the program.

5. Extending the scope of the meetings

a. The fields of psychology, political science, and related fields should be routinely scanned to see what cutting edge theoretical developments are taking place.

b. ISPP should identify policy relevant areas of political psychology.

c. ISPP should try to incorporate some of these policy relevant areas and cutting edge theoretical developments in ISPP meetings when they are stimulating, either
• by existing members who are exploring these topics, or
• by attracting key figures in those fields to attend an Annual meeting – perhaps with an accompanying panel, and
• by attracting junior scholars in these fields.

Strategies:

1. ISPP should seek to advance the teaching of political psychology in academic institutions

a. Because interdisciplinary work is becoming increasingly valued at many universities around the world, ISPP should encourage the acceptance of political psychology by our colleagues by emphasizing the truly interdisciplinary nature of this field.

b. Although political psychology syllabi are currently being collected by the ISPP and are posted on the web site, better use should be made of this resource:

1. Steps should be taken to encourage more instructors to submit their syllabi to the ISPP.

2. Members should be encouraged to look at this resource.

3. ISPP should collect and post lists of texts and other teaching materials that would be useful to people teaching courses.

c. To complement the Handbook and Advances book series it is important that a selection of integrated textbooks be available for teaching courses of political psychology at every level, preferably useful for a sequence of courses including introductory and advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.

1. ISPP should encourage authors who have published successful textbooks in the past to update and expand their work.

2. ISPP should encourage authors who are currently working on a textbook as well as those who might consider such a venture to do so.

d. ISPP should work to get political psychology to be considered an indispensable and valuable perspective to be employed in mainstream work in political science, psychology, sociology, economics, and related disciplines.

e. ISPP should consider taking a leadership role in proposing course sequences (rather than simply individual courses) that could be taught at the undergraduate or graduate levels on political psychology, highlighting course content and inter-relations among the courses.

2. Summer Teaching of Political Psychology to Students

a. ISPP should open a Summer Institute in Political Psychology in Europe. The steps for this venture should begin now.

b. The Summer Institute in Political Psychology (SIPP) currently trains graduate students and faculty who later teach courses in political psychology. The Summer Institute should consider making more explicit efforts to incorporate in its curriculum explicit discussions of how to teach political psychology.

c. ISPP could consider sponsoring a summer program to train undergraduates in political psychology. Often graduate students who take a graduate course in political psychology course have never had any exposure to political psychology in their undergraduate training.

d. SIPP should consider offering 1- to 2-week post-SIPP conferences on specific topics. The conference could be videotaped and put online (video streaming) for others to view later. Papers presented could be published in an edited book.

e. SIPP should consider altering and enhancing its promotional materials to attempt to attract the attention of people outside of political psychology, who may not even currently know what it is.

3. Internet Instruction

a. To address the use of the internet for instruction ISPP should work to develop the software and obtain the services of experienced instructors who will teach interested members how to administer credit and non-credit courses in political psychology. An ISPP Internet School could bring together ISPP members from different parts of the world, to learn or carry out intercultural research.

b. ISPP should fund a small conference focused on internet-based instructional materials, perhaps coupled with the annual ISPP meeting.

c. ISPP should consider sponsoring quick online training courses for people who are already teaching professionally and people who are established scholars and want to branch out into political psychology.

d. ISPP should consider sponsoring online continuing professional education training advertised broadly to relevant professionals in government and related agencies and organizations. ISPP should consult with members who have successfully interfaced with these professional populations to assure that ISPP's approach will be effective as well.

e. ISPP should interview past SIPP graduates from applied fields to ask them what they found useful in the SIPP experience and to ask how ISPP can reach out to more professionals.

f. ISPP should explore training members on how to provide expert testimony in court.

g. ISPP should consider developing and offering a political psychology training program for political journalists or consultants.

Strategies:

1. Connections to other organizations, both scientific and NGOs.

a. ISPP should create a database of related organizations, in the U.S. and in the world. These can include NGOs that are not directly involved in political psychology but are relevant to ISPP's work and concerns.

b. ISPP should create a formal working group that has the task to connect ISPP to other organizations.

c. At ISPP conference sites, the society should local organizations
to seek connections with.

d. ISPP should establish links with these organizations that are mutually beneficial.

e. ISPP should work on connecting different realms of psychology and political science to each other.

f. ISPP should connect with U.N organizations that have to do with knowledge relevant to ISPP.

2. The Society and the media.

a. ISPP should give a limited number of honorary memberships to members of the media.

b. ISPP should utilize the political communications members’ connections with the media as an instrument in getting members of the media connected to ISPP.

c. ISPP should create a working group/committee that has the job to organize media events for the conference each year--roundtables, panels, etc. in conjunction with the ISPP Publicist.

d. ISPP should train people, for example, junior media people such as undergraduate journalism students, junior journalists and others, in political reporting.

e. ISPP should invite members of the press to teach at SIPP.

f. ISPP should designate a person in charge of media relations at each conference, possibly a local person who knows about concerns and interests in the country where the conference is taking place. Get presenters to be available to the media at a certain time.

g. ISPP should create a database accessible on the ISPP website that identifies members of the Society by topics of expertise including, and perhaps especially, people who do applied work.

h. ISPP should establish connections between ISPP and journalism societies.

1. ISPP should exchange conferences programs.

2. ISPP should videotape sessions at the conference which address interesting, topical, important issues and make videos available to the media.

3. ISPP should offer streaming video and streaming audio packages to the media.

3. The Society should take a stand on issues in accordance with the Constitution.

4. Practical applications of political psychology.

a. ISPP should create a working group for the practical applications of political psychology to real life situations. Efforts for the beneficial applications of this knowledge should be promoted. Advertise already existing efforts, describe them in the ISPPNews, and identify funding sources for them.

b. ISPP should encourage and ally ISPP with efforts to train people in practical applications. Find ways to show that the Society values both scholar/practitioners, as well as practitioners whose work focuses on such applications.

c. ISPP should identify issues/problems that are of clear policy relevance and ISPP members who are experts and set task forces (for example, NATO's interest in creating a multinational force, the Swedish plan for the European Union to focus on the prevention of violent conflicts).

5. Junior scholars

a. ISPP should address junior scholar concerns that there is little opportunity to apply knowledge.

b. ISPP should sponsor mentorship lunches at conferences where people with experience in applied settings could talk about their experience. Also, such people could spend time with junior people in other ways as well.

c. ISPP should create training settings in application.

Strategies:

1. ISPP needs to focus on improving its resource base; to mount a financial drive among its members and potential one-time donors.

a. ISPP should contact the membership for a one-time gift to the Society that could constitute an endowment and act as matching funds for approaches to funding agencies.

b. ISPP should contact those members in the Society who might be interested in making a large gift to the Society for a specific purpose, e.g., funding of travel for Third World members to the meeting, a specific regional meeting, a special issue of the journal or newsletter, scholarships to students to attend the summer institute.

c. ISPP should compile a list of potential donors who might be interested in making a gift to the Society for a specific purpose.

d. ISPP should arrange contacts of the donors on the list.